Tiger Barbs
by cognomen
Summary: Sawyer and Sayid reconcile, to the extent that they ever can. Sawyer tries to villainize himself yet again, and Sayid tries not to let him. Very, extremely faint MM.


Reading on the beach was Sawyer's longtime custom. Now, he did it with a makeshift pair of glasses that Sayid had helped craft in an effort to make peace - he'd given Sawyer pain at one point, the least he could do was ease it as penance. If the southerner knew about Sayid's efforts, he made no move to acknowledge them. They regarded each other somewhat bitterly, each skirting where the other walked, dividing territories like fighting dogs penned in together with muzzles to keep them from killing.

Occasionally, they snapped at each other, but a cage of hands was ever-ready to descend on them, pulling them apart before anything really got solved between them. The other survivors meant well, but could not expect that the longer they delayed the struggle for dominance, the fiercer the final fight would be. Each needed desperately to know where he stood in relation to the other, wolves placeless in a pack.

When Sayid approached, hands at his sides like a tail lowered, Sawyer did not snap at him. He took off his mismatched glasses in a hurry when the Iraqi did not move away, but sat down in a proximity that Sawyer was too tired to express his unwelcome toward. Both of them were exhausted. Each knew that neither slept much.

Sayid started talking.

"I've tried very hard to hate you." His hands were folded together in his lap. "But I could not, without also hating myself."

"Plenty to hate."

"You do seem to enjoy giving people reasons."

"I meant about you, Captain Falafel."

Sayid laughed. "I realized you were so inclined on making yourself the villain. I figured that to truly get under your skin I would have to ignore that."

Sawyer growled, shifting suddenly in his place. "You're so intent on getting under my skin. Everyone seems to think that they can understand me and jump right in, that they'll like what they find under there." The southerner's voice was low, menacing. He leaned in, grabbing hold of Sayid's tattered collar, the other man too tired to evade. Once ensnared, he made no move to pull away.

"Maybe if you got a real look, and grew some sense, you'd realize how wrong you are, Quicktrip. I'm not all warm and fuzzy inside."

"That's an -Indian- stereotype."

Sawyer, the master of wit, was given pause. "What?"

"Owning convenience stores. It's a stereotype about people from India, not Iraqis."

"Fuck!" Sawyer exclaimed, shocked at Sayid's frankness. "You're all the damn same!" But he was laughing.

"-You- are not even trying." Sayid smiled. His collar was released, and he eased back, still sitting in the sand.

A silence grew, nurtured by each uncertain as to what to say. Both were too tired for a real fight, and civility was difficult with Sawyer involved. He had a way of turning anything people said around with a nasty, razor-edged retort. It was a defense mechanism, certainly, but one that was practically flawless. Sawyer knew the power of words, a trait that no one would expect by looking at him.

Sure, he spoke simply, but when he aimed to hurt, he achieved his goal.

"You know, we have plenty of things to worry about already." Sayid said, his attention sliding away from the man next to him to the sand instead. Sawyer pawed through his clothes, his hands absently turning pockets for cigarettes that had run down to almost nothing. When one appeared in his hands, it was bent. Like just about everything on the island.

"Yeah. Sure do, don't we." Sawyer never formed his answers as questions. He lit his cigarette with a lighter that looked in remarkable condition, considering.

"You don't have to make yourself the villain."

"You think I'm being extra ornery just to make people hate me." Sawyer laughed. "Let me tell you a little secret, Mohammed. I'm always this full of sunshine and light."

"Yet I've seen you do good things."

"Flukes." Sawyer dismissed him instantly, glancing sidelong at him after a second, squinting. "Wait, when have I done anything good?"

"You treat Kate as if she were a normal human being." Sayid glanced at him sidelong. "Which is something I think she really needs."

"You pay attention to me and Freckles?" Sawyer sounded almost the caricature of amazed. "Never thought you were the peepin' type."

"I pay attention."

"Let me tell you a little secret from my past, Mohammed." Sawyer folded over a corner in the book he had not yet surrendered. Placed it aside in the sand. "When I was a kid, my parents had a fish tank. Dunno what happened to it after-" He stopped. Looking in Sayid's direction, he realized how little he knew of the man's past, and how little that he had revealed of his own. He liked it that way. "After."

"I used to bang on the glass." He lifted the hand he'd grabbed Sayid with, making a striking motion with the heel of his hand in the air. Took a drag on his cigarette at the same time. He exhaled smoke while he continued. "Just to see those little buggers swim as fast as they could in the other direction. That sound like a nice thing to do?"

"You're hoping I'll swim away?" Sayid drew the conclusion out of the air, acute mind twisting Sawyer's words right down to their real meaning, in seconds whittling away the falsity to find their truth. Whatever Sawyer said of the man, he was smart. "If you keep banging on my glass?"

"Now you're just makin' shit up." Sawyer snapped, turning the heel of his hand hard into the sand, indenting it with a lazy smack that did little more than leave an impression of his lifeline that the sands would scrub away with the wind.

"I'm not a little fish." Sayid laughed softly, Sawyer's irritable tone telling him he'd hit close to the mark.

"Yer little." Sawyer flicked his eyes at Sayid's form, indicating his smaller stature with nothing but a glance. The Iraqi understood that, too. He flicked the half-finished cigarette away into the sand, it traced a lazy spiral with it's embered end before extinguishing in it's final resting spot.

"You keep banging, Sawyer." Sayid responded to the insult with a sober tone. He was not particularly sensitive about his height, but the conversation was rapidly descending into a Sawyerish tangent designed solely to piss Sayid off and drive him away. "See if I run."

The strike came sudden and unexpected in the wake of the relative civility. Of course Sawyer threw the first punch, deciding in a moment of spectacular jackassery that it was exactly the right move to make to remind Sayid of how to hate him. No one was around to stop them, the hands did not descend as the Iraqi retaliated, shocked and injured. Violence responded to violence, and somewhere in the tangle and tumble, Sayid felt the book grind into the sand and his back as they rolled.

To some extent, their exhaustion was a blessing. Neither could do more than bruise the other, and very rapidly they expended the will to do anything more than that. The grapple continued for appearances, hands clawing and holding, being torn free by shifts in motion, neither willing to give ground to the other. It changed tone, without either realizing until they found themselves still, faces inches apart. Sawyer found his mouth and vision full of dangling, curled black hair. Sayid could feel the other man's breath on his cheek. Dark, almost regretful eyes met blue ones that were clouded with determination.

Slowly, they both became aware of the embarassing tangle of limbs they had landed themselves in - thighs and groins in close proximity, midsections touching in a way that was entirely too affectionate for comfort.

Sawyer hauled back, quick as an eye blink, and slammed Sayid in the forehead with the heal of his hand. Reeling, the Iraqi shifted backwards, off. Found his knees as Sawyer gained his feet. His hands came up stupidly to the injury while the southerner snatched his book with a snarl, and stalked off.

This time, it was Sawyer who fled, despite being the one who had banged on the glass. Sayid found it a minor victory, but not the battle that he ultimately wanted to win. 


End file.
